After almost missing our flight in the early morning of 25th of December 2007, (because of a party at Hostel Inn in Buenos Aires and our own miss guided time of our flight) we safely, but very tired, arrived at the El Calafate International Airport. (The airport is located some 20 km east of the village and has daily flights to and from Buenos Aires.) We shared a taxi from the airport to the town of El Calafate with a Chilean couple.
El Calafate
El Calafate is in Santa Cruz, a province of Argentina, located in the southern part of the country, in Patagonia. It is a small, cute town with wooden lodges and huts, is set on the glacial blue Lake Argentino, and catering mainly for tourists wanting to see the glaciers. Starry, clear skies await you in this province of Argentina. Beautiful nature and wildlife, just outside the town, awaits eager trekkers. It is easy to find accommodation in this small town, though for us, arriving on Christmas day it wasn’t. But after walking around the town we booked ourselves in a small hotel as all the hostels were full. All in all accommodation is easy to find. There is a supermarket at the end of the main street with fair prices. (Buy your food for your tours in advance, because in the national park there are almost no places to buy food.) We made our own sandwiches (taken from the breakfast buffet at the hotel) for the trip.
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| El Calafate |
The boat excursion: Parque Nacional Los Glaciares
This is the reason for making the trip to El Calafate. The boat excursions are done by professional companies and the boats are clean and comfortable. This is the best and only way to see many of the glaciers and places in the National Park.
“Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (Spanish: The Glaciers) is a national park which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1981. The national park, created in 1937, is the second largest in Argentina. Its name refers to the giant ice cap in the Andes range that feeds 47 large glaciers, of which only 13 flow towards the Atlantic Ocean. The ice cap is the largest outside of Antarctica and Greenland. In other parts of the world, glaciers start at a height of at least 2,500 meters above mean sea level, but due to the size of the ice cap, these glaciers begin at only 1,500m, eroding the surface of the mountains that support them.” - www.wikipedia.com
This is glacier country at its best. The water and the shapes of the ice-bergs floating in the lake are astoundingly bright-ice-turquoise-blue. (The reason for this extraordinary color is because of the rock flour, or glacial flour, which becomes suspended in river water making the water appear cloudy, which is sometimes known as glacial milk. If the river flows into a glacial lake, the lake may appear turquoise in color as a result.)
The boat excursion travels between a number of smaller glaciers as well as the major ones which flow into Lake Argentino:
1. Bahía Onelli, a lake where you get to relax and eat your lunch for about an hour. There you have beautiful views of small pieces of icebergs lying in and around the lake.
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| Bahía Onelli |
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| One of the interesting ice figures at Bahía Onelli |
2. The inaccessible Spegazzini glacier. The boat stops at part of the 100 meter wall of the glacier. Here you can hear and see parts of the wall falling off. We took a video clip just as a part of the wall came down. The whole boat rocked on the waves from the fall. It was quite a riveting and at the same time scary experience!
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Spegazzini glacier  |
3. The Upsala Glacier is a large valley glacier. “The Upsala Glacier is well known for its rapid retreat, which many see as evidence for global warming.”
A very interesting fact I didn’t know at that time: “The name comes from the old spelling with one p of Uppsala University, which sponsored the first glaciological studies in the area. Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden(!) , and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477.” - www.wikipedia.com
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| Upsala glacier - our boat couldn't get through and I don't think it was meant to go through |
5. The Perito Moreno is reachable by land. This is the most famous glacier and a must see, 80km from El Calafate. We took a bus to see this glacier the following day. You can see the enormous glacier just meters away from you. You spend a couple of hours here as the sound coming from the glacier is extraordinary and you just want to stay there and stare at this mother (nature) of a wonder! The cracking ice makes a sound difficult to describe. It is as if the glacier is moaning and groaning, giving birth to smaller glaciers as it falls with a huge splash in the water. This happens quiet often and it is worth the (patient) wait. For me something beautiful was the sun that came out from behind the clouds now and again as if it was playing hide and seek over Perito. And as the sun's rays touched the glacier it gave out a cry of pure joy and satisfaction. I've never seen nature playing right in front of my eyes in such a unique and surreal way. "Perito Moreno nearby is one of the few advancing glaciers in the world, which is 30km x 5km wide. Nature at its most awesome and intimidating."
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Perito Moreno - the sun playing over it |
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Perito Moreno |
And now I have to say that Patagonia wasn’t planned, I’ve never heard of it and I never knew about the glaciers. We simply had a few days to kill over Christmas and after talking to a travel guide in Buenos Aires the most obvious thing to do were to go see the glaciers in Patagonia! Without accommodation booked we found a room on Christmas day and on the 26th of December found 2 seats on a boat to go see the glaciers. This is not the ideal way to travel but it was a hell of an adventure and a highlight in our Argentinian trip!
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